Yikes
by chapsnat
Summary: Tracer and Winston were confident they'd identified a failed bombing attempt by Talon...until footage of the bomb's detonation reveals a far more sinister plot. Now they have to scramble to locate the sole witness of the botched mission before Talon sends in the big guns (namely Reaper) to finish the job.
1. Tracer and the Triceratops

"As far as explosions go," Tracer began, kicking a crushed soda can aside as she ambled across the dark street, "This is somewhat...tame? I love ya Winston, but I was hoping my trip to the States would have a bit more _me_ time. It's been ages since I've had a real vacation, y'know? Why'd you need me to take a gander at this?"

A deep fissure ran from one side of the street to the other, the black asphalt buckling in on itself where it had cracked, sinking a bit in the center where the earth beneath it had given away. The blast was shaped somewhat like a comet, with a crater in the center of the road and several cracks trailing off from it in one direction. On the far side of the road was the ElecTrail public transport train, nearly derailed by the tremor, across from the entrance to the parking lot to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.

It was the statue leading up to the parking lot that had stolen the show. Police men, reporters, and caution tape had wrapped around the scene for hours after the incident, preventing Tracer from getting a good look at it. She had to wait until late in the evening after everyone had gone home before she could be sure she could assess the situation without interference. The street lights had been destroyed in the quake, so all she had to rely on for light was her chronal accelerator and a shoulder-mounted clip-on flashlight. The statue itself was a relic of the past, a leftover from the original museum some fifty-odd years ago. A bronze _Tyrannosaurus rex_ engaged in mortal combat with a _Triceratops_ on a waist-high cement pedestal, with a holovid screen mounted below, which would've had scrolling advertisements for upcoming exhibits had it not been cracked in half.

The facts as Tracer knew them were these: sixteen hours ago, a man had been impaled upon the metal horns of the _Triceratops_ statue. Something had exploded in the middle of the street, cracking it in half and collapsing the sewer underneath, knocking out streetlights and traffic signals, and throwing the man into the statue and nearly fatally piercing him through the abdomen. Paramedics removed him and rushed him, along with another casualty, to the hospital.

Being careful not to tread in the jagged crevice, she stepped over the caution tape and approached the statue. Tracer gave a low whistle as she let the blue glow of her chronal accelerator play over the burnished surface of the dinosaurs. One of the _Triceratops_ ' horns was still conspicuously crusty.

"Yuck," she murmured into her communicator. "Like I said, this explosion is small potatoes compared to what we normally deal with. Don't we usually let the local authorities take over situations like this? I mean, sure, given how much damage it's done, it's astounding that only two people got hurt..." She trailed off, glancing over her shoulder at the buckled road. This place was packed with tourists and field trips and patrons earlier that morning; how did they get so lucky that so few people were injured in the blast?

"Did you happen to find anything?" Winston asked from his base, viewing the scene from a satellite feed. He could make out an infrared silhouette of Tracer from above, standing on the corner with the statue.

"Nope, nothing, sorry big guy," she said, pulling her scanner out of her pocket. The small teardrop-shaped pod floated in her hand, a sliver of blue acrylic gently pulsing as it waited for her command. "Display results." The scanner tilted upward, the fat rounded side with the acrylic piece facing the sky, and projected a holovid. "No shrapnel, no nuclear evidence, nothing in the way of combustible materials. No exploding gas leak under the street, no lighting from above, nothing. For all I can tell, the street blew up of its own bloody accord and tossed that bloke straight onto this dino here," she said, fondly patting the _Triceratops_ ' knee. "By the way, is he expected to make it? I heard the chap survived."

"It's been confirmed he'd recover. The statue's horn missed all major arteries." Winston snorted, apparently unimpressed that the civilian hadn't been gored to death. His FaceCam finally connected up in the corner of her vision. His big head was propped up by a hairy blue hand, the other one busily typing away. The glazed-over look in his bespectacled eyes gave Tracer the impression that he'd been at his computer terminal all day, following this story intently as information was released.

"You don't seem too happy that he survived," Tracer observed, suspiciously.

"Want to know what else I heard about this man? Something that has yet to be broken to the public?"

"Sure."

"He was a Talon agent."

" _Woah_ , wait, _what_?! _That_ changes things, Winston."

"Yes."

"Get out of here."

"I'm serious. Genndy Takyama. He'd taken the alias Reagan Tani. He was identified and exposed as an undercover terrorist when he was brought to the hospital. They'd accessed his records for medical history and found that it was a stolen identity. He likely didn't think he'd get caught, so he didn't put a lot of effort into covering his tracks. Talon is probably going to let him rot in prison rather than expend any energy in trying to reclaim him, given how easy it was to expose him."

"So _that's_ why you interrupted my vacation. I thought you'd called me over to LA just to meet up at that dingy old 'Socal Base' you've been digging up. Well, clearly this is Talon's work, then," Tracer concluded, gesturing to the ruined street. "What about the other casualty?"

Winston wrinkled his nose. "That's the touchy part. Takyama was, for reasons I haven't figured out yet, posing as a substitute teacher at an elementary school on the other side of LA."

"Uh _huh_."

"He was taking his class on a field trip to the museum. One of his students was injured in the blast-"

" _Are they_ -!"

"He's fine, he's fine," Winston quickly assured her. "I probably should've led with that..."

"Ya think?"

"It's very unclear what his injuries were, they appear to be shock related. His parents didn't want any of his information to be released, so the hospital remained vague on his condition. He was unconscious for most of the day, but according to the report, he's in a stable condition."

"Good," she sighed, relieved. The last thing she wanted was another Mondatta scenario... she pushed that thought aside, for her own peace of mind. "I dunno what Talon's playing at. They couldn't be bothered to get the bomb into the museum itself? They couldn't even make it to the parking lot before it detonated?"

"Perhaps it went off by mistake? Maybe his mission was compromised and he tried to do as much damage as he could before his cover was blown. Or maybe it was just faulty equipment."

"He must have remotely detonated it, or was at least a good distance away from the bomb itself, since he wasn't blown apart six ways to Sunday. He was far away enough that he wasn't incinerated, but close enough that the shockwave shish-kabob'd him onto the statue."

"But it doesn't appear to have been a bomb, though," Winston said, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. "Like you said, there were no signs of any chemical, combustible, or nuclear explosion. It almost seems as though...I don't know, as though a great big invisible hammer came down and crushed this intersection like a sheet of cardboard."

"True. There's not even any ash here, where the blast looks like it started from," she said, now standing in the shallow crater that appeared to be the origin point from which the explosion radiated. She traced the toe of her boot around, but no ash or similar residue came up.

Her attention snapped to Winston's camera, his face suddenly illuminated by a flashing red light. Athena, his AI program, was alerting him to something off screen.

"What is it?"

"You've got company," Winston grumbled. "Looks like Talon agents have been dispatched to do a little examination of the scene as well."

"I'll take cover for now. Keep me posted in case of any funny business." She turned off her shoulder flashlight and vaulted over the statue, landing lightly behind it and crouching below its base, peering around the corner. A car was pulling in with its headlights turned off, taking advantage of the busted streetlights, using the cover of darkness to further mask its approach. Tracer's goggles had some slight night-vision ability, but it didn't give her an immediately clear picture of what was going on. The car was forced to stop where the streetlights had fallen and blocked the road.

The windows were tinted, so it was impossible to tell how many Talon operatives were in the car. The passenger door opened and an agent climbed out. He stood there for a moment, surveying the scene, his hands on his hips. From what she could tell, he was dressed in the standard-issue Talon regalia: a helmet and face mask/respirator combo that covered his whole head, red-tinted goggles, and a heavily armored combat uniform. She wasn't close enough to hear exactly what he was saying to his comrades in the car, but it sounded something like " _...Really underestimated...lucky to be alive..._ " The driver rolled down his window and urged the agent to hurry up and " _find it,_ " whatever " _it_ " was. Their respirators made it difficult for them to be understood, even in ideal conditions.

"What are they searching for?" Tracer heard Winston mutter in her earpiece, more to himself than to her. She saw the Talon agent pull out a scanning device of his own, the small smooth metal device floating in his hand for a moment, before blinking red and zooming off down the street a few hundred yards.

"Did they dispatch a scanner?" Winston asked. "I can't tell from my satellite feed."

"Yes, it appears they're looking for something, something we didn't pick up on..." Tracer whispered, leaning further around the statue to observe, doing her best to keep the glow from her chronal accelerator hidden. The agent's scanner had stopped and stood hovering over a downed traffic light. Attached to the top of the traffic light was-

"The traffic camera!" Tracer hissed. "Wouldn't the explosion have been recorded by the traffic camera?"

"I-well, no, I don't think so," Winston said, furiously typing away to pull up the published details from earlier that day. "According to the reports, the explosion destroyed the cameras, there wasn't any footage that the police could get to.."

"It looks like Talon has a way to access it, though," Tracer said, her grip on the statue's base tightening. Even without the use of her goggles, she could see the tell-tale _LOADING EXTRACTION_ symbol floating over the agent's scanner as it began to wirelessly collect the traffic camera's contents.

"They're going to find out what exactly happened this morning," growled Winston.

"Not if I can help it." The scanner had finished its download, the red _LOADING EXTRACTION_ symbol shifting to _EXTRACTION COMPLETE_.

"There we go," Tracer heard the agent say. Within half a second she'd Blinked over to him, the bright cerulean flash of her chronal accelerator hurtling her through time and space to end up inches away from the agent's side.

"Evening chap! Whatcha got there?" she said, cocking her head to one side to look over his shoulder. "Ooo, looks like you were able to pry something good outta that banged-up camera. Mind if I take a look?" She quickly leaned back to dodge a punch, using her momentum to throw herself into a back handspring and withdraw her Pulse pistols. "Play nice! I just want to take a quick peek!" she chirped, before opening fire. The street was lit up with bright blue bolts of energy as she rained down a hail of ammunition on the guy. He crumpled to the road, one hand on his undrawn weapon, the other grasping the scanner. She landed on the roof of the car, denting it it where her heels landed. She could hear the man in the driver seat below rustle around with his own weapon and take aim, pointing his weapon up at the ceiling. She Blinked off the car just in time, the roof of it exploding with bullets, shredding it with the amount of firepower at close range. She swung around and kicked through the open window on the driver's side, her heel satisfyingly connecting with the second man's jaw, sending him face-first into the passenger window. He didn't move again.

After making sure there wasn't anybody in the back seat, Tracer extricated herself from the car and returned to the scanner, prying it out of the agent's hand. She pulled the memory card out of it and inserted it into her own scanner. "I'm sending the footage to you now," Tracer said, pausing to blow a lock of hair out of her face, the only indication she'd been engaged in combat just now.

"Thank you. It doesn't look like Talon sent particularly skilled agents to retrieve this information."

"Nope, part of me wanted to drag on the fun for a bit longer, but I was worried the scanner would get damaged."

"The video should be all loaded up now. I'm starting it from a few minutes before the explosion occurred. Shall we?"

"We shall."

Winston pressed _PLAY_ , and the resulting holovid shimmered into view for both of them.


	2. Viral Video

_This could be bad-_

 _No, stop it. It's not going down like that,_ Tracer mentally scolded herself. _Everything is going to be fine. This is not going to be another King's Row Catastrophe. Winston has a plan, everything is going to be fine._

She still couldn't shake the feeling of unease that grew in her stomach. The entire situation was weird: first the explosion assessment, then the-

 _(GET. AWAY. FROM. ME.)_

-bizarre video recording of the altercation...

"Winston, are you playing the video again?"

"Yes, sorry, can you still hear it?"

"...I _can_." she said, confusion and unease coloring her tone.

 _(GET. AWAY. FR-)_

The mantra stopped; Winston must have paused the video.

"Sorry. I was hoping maybe wearing headphones would prevent you from hearing it again."

But it didn't. Somehow, someway, the audio was capable of worming its way into both their heads every time the video played, even though no sound was coming from the speakers.

"You sure traffic cameras can't pick up audio?" Tracer asked, rubbing her temples.

"There's no way. They don't have any audio recording capabilities. The audio we're hearing isn't..." He couldn't bring himself to say "natural" or "normal," because it was beyond obvious at this point. "There's just...no way that mute video footage can generate sound. And for us to comprehend it as _words_ , to be able to be able to recognize it as speech through all that static..."

"This is _spooky_ ," she said with giggle. A decidedly nervous giggle.

Winston and Tracer had watched the video nearly a dozen times. The idea that such a powerful burst of energy, of _emotion_ , could somehow be recorded by a camera and interpreted as sound waves...it was creepy and intrusive. It almost didn't feel like they were hearing it with their _ears_ , but rather with their _heads_...as if the point of origin of the video's audio was coming from inside their skulls, that something was hijacking their brain's ability to process sound... There was a small part of Tracer that wished those Talon agents had watched the video so that they could feel as stumped and uncomfortable as she did.

 _(GET. AWAY. FROM. ME.)_

"Luvvvv," she complained, "Please give the video a rest for the moment. It's hard enough waiting around for this thing-" Tracer knocked her fist against the hull of her chronal accelerator- "to cool down before I can Blink again. That video is giving me a headache."

"I'm sorry, I'm just...really struggling to understand it. We need to get to the bottom of this before Talon does."

"One step at a time..." she said, to pacify them both. "As soon as we pop in and make sure that kid's okay, you can start dissecting that video like the big super serious scientist that you are. I'll stop by to help if I can, if ya want."

She was currently balanced on the roofline of a church. A flaking old limestone gargoyle that stuck out over the lawn below made for a good spot to wait for her accelerator to recharge. She'd been hopping from rooftop to rooftop for the past few minutes, Blinking when she could to shorten the trip. She could see the hospital from where she crouched, anxiously drumming her fingers on her accelerator, praying the cooldown time would end soon.

"I've been monitoring the area around the hospital," Winston reported. "If Talon is cloaking a ship that's remained in the same spot for too long, it'll show up on the radar. I haven't seen anything yet, but that doesn't mean they're not planning to finish what Takyama started."

"Or they're already there and we haven't picked up on them yet." Tracer mumbled. She perked when the concentric rings circling the core of her accelerator pulsed again, indicating that it was back in action. "Finally! Back to business."

* * *

The video was only two or so minutes long. It was a bit grainy and washed out, but the action of the intersection below the camera leading into the museum's parking lot was clearly visible. The dinosaur statue was lit up by the morning sun after having been cleaned for a major exhibition the day before. The time in the bottom right corner read 10:03 AM, about an hour after the museum opened. Traffic from the morning commute had largely died down, leaving the street clear.

There was nothing for now, just the bronze statue sitting on the corner, flanked on either side by a row of tall hedges that hid the gate surrounded the museum.

Just a single car passing.

Just the hedges rustling in the breeze.

Just nothing.

Just silence and stillness...silence that very, very gradually gave way to a high ringing noise. The noise wavered in and out, that sort of electric ultra-high whine associated with old television screens when they're first turned on. There was still nothing happening on the screen,

Just the hedges,

Just the statue,

Just-

The ringing careened into a loud, grating, mechanical squealing, like badly serviced parking breaks, like nails on a chalkboard. The video began to flicker and break up, horizontal bars of static and interference flashing across the screen, as if the noise alone was enough to disrupt the playback of the footage itself.

A flock of startled birds flew up out of the hedges. Something was rustling among them, a cluster of manicured branches shaking and trembling near the bottom where the hedges met the sidewalk. A pale hand emerged from under the bush and the video screen's display went _absolutely mad_ , jumping and flickering in and out. Throughout Winston's lab, other computers had flickered to life, _totally unprompted_ , and began playing the same clip at the same point, all emitting that piercing shriek. Some of the screens even cracked from the noise.

 _(gggggGGETA AWAY YFROM ME E. )_

But the video was only half over.


	3. Creeper

Winston never liked hospitals. To him, they represented every negative quality of the Horizon Lunar Colony: stark, sterile, clinical, and cold. The spotless white plasmetal walls, the way linoleum sickeningly gleamed under florescent lights...no thank you. That was a world he was glad to leave behind. Save the medical things for Mercy.

He had ordered Athena to boot up a cruiser to take him into the heart of Los Angeles in case Tracer needed assistance. There was nothing (yet) on the radar to indicate that Talon had a vehicle lying in wait near the hospital, but that didn't mean they weren't cloaked or on their way. He kept his eyes moving, roving over monitor after monitor in his lab. He was only able to access a few of the hospital's security cameras, not being an adept enough hacker to get to them all quickly. He watched Tracer enter through the waiting room in the reception area. It was late, so there weren't all that many people milling about on this side of the hospital, so she didn't feel the need to be inconspicuous.

The lobby was empty, dotted here and there with herds of benches, chairs, and coffee tables laden with out-of-date magazines. Several holovids were hung up on the walls, playing muted news reels with dialogue subtitled underneath. There was nobody in line and the front desk was manned by a single sullen receptionist, typing aimlessly at her computer, likely playing a computer game rather than doing actual work. Clearing her throat and giving a small wave, Tracer leaned over the edge of the desk to get her attention. "'Ello."

The receptionist looked up from her computer and did a double take, blinking rapidly. Tracer was one of the more well-known members of Overwatch and was easily recognized in public when she wore her signature uniform. Clearly the receptionist knew who she was.

"Oh-! Hey, aren't you that gal-" the receptionist started, before being cut off.

"Yes yes, it's me, _'cheers luv the cavalry's here_ ' and whatnot. I was hoping you could help me?"

"Don't you guys have a magic angel doctor or somet-"

"I _meant_ help me find someone, someone who I think is staying here." She pulled out a holovid capsule and flicked it on, keeping the resulting holographic screen small so that she could keep the conversation private from the whole waiting room. "I'm looking for a Mr. Grayson Park? I understand he was admitted today." She pointed to the short blurb of information that Winston was able to provide for her:

PARK, GRAYSON

9 YEARS

MONICA VISTA ELEMENTARY

It wasn't a whole lot of useful information, not even a picture.

"Park...Park...Grayson..." the receptionist muttered as she typed Grayson's name into the hospital's database. "What's your relation to the patient?"

"Um. ...Concerned bystander?"

"A what?"

"Look, I just need to know what room he's staying in. That's all."

"I'm...sorry miss, I can't give you that kind of information unless you're a listed family member."

"Well in that case, I'm his great aunt-"

" _And_ can provide proof of relation. Superhero or not."

"Oh come _on_ , not even a hint?"

"I'm sorry miss Chaser-"

"Tracer,"

"-But I can't give you that information. I'd lose my job and jeopardize the patient's safety."

"Is there someone like a supervisor I can chat with?"

The receptionist raised an eyebrow.

"Please?" Tracer asked. "You and I both know I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important."

The receptionist puffed up a bit as she took a deep breath, weighing her options, before heaving a sigh. "I'll be right back, I'll go grab my 'supervisor' and we'll see what we can do," she said without a lot of conviction, getting up and disappearing around a cubicle partition behind the desk. She poked her head around to add "My niece is a big fan of that big gorilla guy on your team, by the way," before leaving.

"That's really all the information you could find? Are you sure you can't track down his room number?" Tracer whispered into her communicator.

"Sorry, hacking isn't my forte. We're lucky I've got security camera feeds, though it looks like it's just for the first floor." Winston glanced back over at the feeds, showing nothing but empty stretches of hallway between patient rooms, and from overhead the main entrance from the outside. "Did she start searching for Grayson before she left?"

"Yes, I believe so..." Tracer said, glancing back and forth between the computer monitor and the cubicle the receptionist had walked behind. "Should I be naughty and take a peek?"

There was a brief, slight interruption in Winston's video and audio feed, and in the link between their communicators.

"...Odd," Winston murmured, his brow furrowed. "We lost signal for a moment." He squinted at the video feed. A peculiar- but familiar -sensation was beginning to well up in him.

"Winston-" Tracer said, urgently. He snapped his attention back to her monitor. The lights in the waiting room were flickering, independently of each other.

He could feel himself getting goosebumps. "I think you're going to have to take a peek," he growled, his anxiety mounting as his computer monitors began to whistle and crackle as they'd done before.

"Gotcha," she said, gripping the computer monitor in both hands and tilting it backwards just as the receptionist returned.

"Excuse me, miss, you can't just grab- _Excuse_ me, let go of that, please! I _will_ call security-"

Tracer ignored her. She caught a glimpse of Grayson's photo, a birthday, some random weight and blood type information, but most importantly a room number. She let go of the computer and let it topple back onto the desk. "I've got a room number. 342. Probably on the third floor if I had to guess. I'm taking the stairs-"

She was interrupted as the lights flickered so violently that a tube near the entrance to the waiting room burst, making the receptionist yelp in surprise. Half of the lights on that side of the room remained dark. The computer monitor lying face-down on the desk blinked off for a moment, until-

"What in the world..." Winston whispered, more to himself than to Tracer. The traffic cam video was playing on his computer again, without him having played the video himself. It had simply begun playing on its own.

"...Winston," she breathed. "Did you...?"

"That's not me. I'm not playing the video..." he replied, taking off his glasses in astonishment. He glanced at Tracer's cam and realized she was referring to the receptionist's monitor, which had begun playing the traffic cam footage too. The lights in the waiting room were flickering in sync with the buzzing and screeching of the video.

There was the crack of a single, distant gunshot. Everyone went quiet for a moment. The lights ceased to flicker. Tracer froze where she stood, her mind immediately flying to the worst possible scenarios. _Did Talon already get here? Did they find Grayson before we did? Did I fail? Is this another Mondatta-_

The receptionist had picked up the phone at her desk and was calling for security, but Tracer had already moved past her and entered the hospital proper, heading straight towards the stairwell next to the elevator. She'd be able to travel faster than any elevator anyway, and didn't want to be trapped in it in case the power failed entirely. Already Tracer could hear phone calls from various people in the hospital, staff and patients alike, phoning the police in response to the gunshot. She always had her earpiece communicator linked to police frequencies, and they were coming in handy now.

" _Hello, 911? I need to report a gunshot-"_

" _It was so loud, I think it was right outside my room-"_

" _I think I heard a gunshot, or-"_

" _Sounded like a car backfiring, or a gun-"_

" _It was above me, on the floor above me, and I'm near the top floor-"_

" _Someone's got a gun-"_

She glanced at the directory posted on the wall by the stairwell, tracing her finger from where her current location was indicated to the 340-349 block of rooms on the third floor. She Blinked up the stairway, beige concrete and industrial lighting blurring in her vision, before she reached the third floor. The hallway was all dark, in a complete blackout, with the only light spilling in from the stairway door. She activated her shoulder-mounted light and crept forward, a hand on a pistol as she tiptoed down the hall. Her feet dragged through broken glass from the busted overhead lights. Tracer got the impression the lights up here had flickered so hard that they flew to pieces. _No, no, no, please, don't let me be too late. Don't let this happen again. Please. I can't do this again._ She squeezed the grip of her pistol, biting her lip to bring her back to her senses. She needed to get a handle on her emotions if she wanted to minimize the damage of _whatever_ was happening.

There was something rectangular lying on the floor in front of an open door...no, wait, the rectangular thing _was_ the door, having been ripped from its casing and thrown down. There were some pretty sizable dents in it, deep enough that they prevented the door from lying flat. The room numbers on either side of the busted-down door read 341 and 343.

She steeled herself before drawing her pistols and charging into the hospital room. The glow from her chronal accelerator and shoulder light cut through the gloom. The hospital bed looked like it had been thrown against the wall and bent in the middle into an L-shape. It lay on its side like a barricade in the corner, its covers draped all around it. The fabric looked as though it had been torn apart. The window on the far wall was open, with a long silvery crack running through it, and the drapes had been ripped down. A holovid screen on the wall occasionally flickered with static and brief snatches of the traffic cam video, intermittently illuminating the lightless room like a strobe.

"...It appears Grayson's flown the coop," she said into her communicator with a forced laugh. "He's not here."

"What!?" Winston barked, lowering himself down into the cockpit of his aerocar. He wasn't at his computer any longer, having heaved himself over to the small hangar at his base to travel to the hospital himself.

"He's not here. His room's trashed, but he's not here."

"Any...any sign of-"

"There's definitely the sign of a struggle, but no blood."

"The gunshot?"

"Not sure yet. I'm eavesdropping on the calls to the police that everyone in the hospital is making. It sounds like the gunshot came from an upper floor, not this one. Are you on your way over here?"

"I am," he said, igniting the engines. "We don't know what we're dealing with here. You might need my help."

"Winston..."

"Yes?"

There was a pause. Her expression was unreadable from his facecam; her eyes were shut tight and her jaw was set. After a moment she got over it and shook her head slightly.

"Nothing. Nevermind. I'll see you over here."

"Gotcha. I'm only a few blocks away."

His facecam window minimized out of her field of vision, but their audio communication link was still open. Tracer continued poking around the trashed hospital room, lifting up the slashed bedding and double checking the bathroom to make sure nobody was there.

A call came in from a cell phone, somewhere in the hospital.

" _911, what is your emergency?"_

" _I need help,"_ said a small, panting, exhausted sounding voice. There was a lot of static and interference from wherever this person was calling.

" _What's wrong? How can we help you?"_

" _I-uh-"_ There was a pause, static filling the silence. Tracer paused in the open doorway, listening more intently now. _"I'm being chased. I really need help right now. I'm stuck here."_

" _Who's chasing you?"_ the 911 operator asked, keeping their voice level so as not to alarm whoever they were talking to.

" _I'm-hngh-"_ They made a sharp, pained, grunting noise, like they'd stubbed their toe against the corner of a coffee table.

" _Hello?"_ the operator asked when the line went silent for a few seconds. _"What's your name? Where are you?"_

" _Grayson Park."_

Tracer straightened up with a start. _Come on Grayson, where are you..._ There was another long pause.

" _Grayson,"_ the operator said, now recognizing that this was a child on the line. _"Where are you now? Who's chasing you?"_

Grayson didn't respond for a good ten seconds, the static over phone line heightening into the same screeching noise from the traffic video.

" _Grayson, who's chasing you? Where are you at?"_

" _I'm on the roof-"_ he said, with what sounded like a great deal of effort. _"I can't keep the door shut."_

Tracer was already headed towards the stairwell again, heart pounding, afraid that if she Blinked now she'd miss something important. She didn't want to rush into this and make the situation worse, if Grayson was being pursued.

" _Don't worry Grayson,"_ the operator said as calmly as possible. " _The police are on their way. They'll be there very soon. Can you tell me who's chasing you?"_

" _Don't know his name,"_

" _Can you guess? Can you describe him?"_

" _I...what-"_

" _Can you tell me what he looks like?"_

" _Big. With a black jacket."_

" _Anything else?"_

" _...I think his name is Creeper."_

Tracer's blood ran cold. _He means_ Reaper.


	4. Nope

Grayson winced as he washed his hands, shifting his weight from foot to foot on the stool in front of the sink, being a little too short to reach it comfortably without it. The cuts on his hands weren't completely healed and the soap made them sting. He avoided looking at his reflection. The lighting in the bathroom made his albinism look gross and sickly rather than just, y'know, _pale_. His choppy white hair was stuck up in the back where he'd slept on it wrong, and the bandages around his knees creaked as he stepped down from his stool.

It must have been something like two in the morning when he'd crept out of his bed to go to the little bathroom connected to his hospital room. He'd never been awake that late before. Mom had tucked him in at, like, nine or ten or something, a little while after he'd come out of his coma-thing. She must have gone home after he fell asleep again. He reached up and rubbed his temples, trying to massage away the ghost of a headache that had formed earlier. He could feel the cuts in his hands flex and bend as he did so, the cuts that had formed when he dragged himself out of those bushes in front of the museum earlier that day.

He slowly rolled his head around his shoulders, trying to loosen up his neck. Thinking about what had happened at the intersection in front of the museum made him anxious. He'd been told by Mom, who had been told by the police, that a gas main (whatever that was) had burst under the street as he was arriving at the museum for his field trip. Grayson remembered events happening very, very differently.

 _Ugh, no, I dun wanna think about that anymore_ , he chided himself, squishing his face between his hands.

He turned off the bathroom light and pressed the door latch so that it would slide open. Being afraid of the dark, he'd turned on all the lights before using the bathroom. He clambered into bed and pulled the stiff sheets up against him. Once he was cozy, he tilted his head towards the light switch, forcing it to turn off. The brief mental connection between himself and the light switch gave him a fleeting sense of familiarity with the circuitry that ran around the room. _What do hospitals do when the power goes out?_ He imagined thousands of hamsters running on little hamster wheels somewhere deep below the hospital that generated power in case of emergencies. That must have been expensive, if that's how it worked.

He lay on his back for a moment or so, staring up at the ceiling with his eyes half-closed. He'd been unconscious for most of the day and didn't really feel the need to go to back sleep. There weren't any cartoons on the holovid, since it was so late at night. Mom must have thought he'd stay asleep until she got back the next morning, so she didn't feel the need to bring any videogames or something for him to play with while he was stuck here. He rolled over onto his side, facing the window. He didn't want to be here, but not _just_ because he was bored and restless. He didn't like what had happened that made him come here. The _fear_ he'd felt earlier that day, the _anger_...anger that made the asphalt shake and concrete split apart like a graham cracker. They were all too big of emotions, too big of feelings to fit inside someone as little as him. He covered his face with his hands, feeling his cheeks grow hot as he willed himself not to cry. _Stop thinking about it._ He rubbed the moisture from his eyes rolled over onto his back again. He didn't understand what was happening to him, and his feelings towards the matter vacillated wildly from _wow this is cool,_ to _oh my god everything is scary_.

A thin shaft of light from the window fell across his face, shining directly into his eyes, annoying him. He really didn't want to get up out of bed, but he'd feel too stuffy if he covered his face with a blanket to block the light. He sat up and looked over at the window. The gauze drapes had been drawn slightly and the window was half-open. He considered shutting the window without getting up, but decided against it. _I shouldn't be lazy._ He slid out of bed again, his bare feet hitting the cold linoleum, and approached the window.

And then he froze. Mom had shut the window before she left, hours ago. It shouldn't still be open. He pulled the curtain all the way back and found that the clasp on the window was damaged, like it had been broken off. He knew Mom had latched it, because she had complained about how difficult it was to close. He took a quick peek out the window, glancing in all directions. A parking lot, a little park beyond that, trees everywhere. A distant billboard. Even at this hour, there were still cars out on the road.

He took a step back from the window, a hand still gripping the curtain. He could tell he wasn't alone in the room. As his anxiety grew, the lights in the room began to flicker. A sickly, nervous feeling began to well up in his stomach. The holovid screen was blinking on and off too. Whatever was in the room with him must have gotten in through the window, and had probably planned to wait for him to fall asleep before trying anything.

"Nope," Grayson said aloud. "Nope nope nope nope. Not doing this. Nuh-uh." He turned and swiped his cell phone off his nightstand and his jacket from the foot of the bed, tugging it over his hospital gown as he beelined straight for the door. _This is the part of the movie where the monster shows up. I know it's here. I'm not gonna wait for it._ The monster realized that Grayson was on his way out the door. He could feel something cold and sharp snatch at the nape of his neck. His mind reached out reflexively

 _(!NOPE!)_

causing the lamp on his nightstand to explode, briefly blinding the attacker. Grayson's bed swung upwards to stand on one end, and slid across the room, sweeping the intruder into the bathroom and barricading the door. Grayson had to lean against the wall for a moment, his head pounding as if he'd been hung upside-down for the past five minutes, his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

 _(ugh)_

 _(this bed is heavy)_

He hadn't fully recovered from the explosion at the museum, and  
 _(still heavy)_

every bit of telekinetic activity exhausted him. His head snapped up when he heard rough, gnarled chuckling from the bathroom. He was still mentally engaged with the bed, keeping it held fast against the open bathroom doorway. He could feel the intruder sinking his claws into the mattress, tearing at the bedsheets

 _(does this guy have metal nails)_

 _(what)_

 _(thats creepy)_

He was forced to split his attention between leaving the room _and_ holding the bed up. He was afraid that if he diverted his attention for a split second to shutting the bathroom door, the attacker could use that opportunity to get out. After staggering clumsily over to the hall door, he pressed his hand to the sensor and allowed it to slide open. He tumbled out into the hallway, landing hard on his hands and knees. Before the door shut automatically, he glanced back into the room. He was horrified to see a stream of black vapor ooze out from around the bathroom door's doorjamb, swirling around the bed and collecting in a pillar in the center of the room. The mist solidified into the rough shape of an adult

 _(what)_

who dusted off his shoulder with the back of his hand.

"Neat trick," the figure taunted. "Too bad I've got tricks of my own."

 _(nope)_

Grayson made the hall door between himself and the trespasser slam shut, tightly wedging itself into its own casing to prevent it from being opened normally. He shakily got to his feet, still clutching his phone in his hand, before making a mad dash towards the bank of elevators at the end of the corridor. His body was slowing and his breath came to him in shuddering gasps. He wouldn't be able to do much more telekinetic stuff to defend himself. He needed to pace himself if he was going to outrun this guy.

 _Creeper. I think that's his name. I think I recognize him. He's on the news sometimes. The really grainy low quality footage from the news. There's never been any clear images of him because anybody who's ever gotten close enough to see him usually ends up dead. Am I gonna end up dead? After all that crap today, I'm gonna get killed?_

He'd reached the elevators, but before he could press the 'down' button, an enormous dent had burst out from the center of his room's door, likely where Creeper's knee had smashed against it to knock it down. Grayson must have hit the elevator button over a thousand times in rapid succession before the second dent appeared in the door, dislodging it from its casing and sending it flying across the hall, where it landed on the linoleum in a loud clatter. Creeper casually strode out of the room, crossing his arms as he looked up and down the corridor. He spotted Grayson furiously pounding his fist against the elevator button and nonchalantly advanced on him.

The lights over Creeper's head flickered and burst in the hopes that they would blind him again, but the falling debris of glass and plastic glanced harmlessly off of his mask and coat. The elevator arrived at the same time as Creeper, who grabbed a fistful of Grayson's hair as he boarded it, dragging the kid inside along with him. The elevator doors closed. Creeper reached out and jabbed the button for the top floor. They were silent for a moment, the only sound coming from the soft _dings_ every time the elevator ascended to a new floor.

"I heard you gave some of my operatives some trouble earlier," Creeper finally rasped. "Surprising, given how you're not exactly...intimidating."

Grayson got goosebumps as he spoke; was _that_ some sort of voice modulator, or did he just naturally sound that creepy? He painfully forced Grayson to turn his face up to look at him.

"Looks like we forgot your glasses back in your room. I guess that's alright." Creeper finally released his claws from Grayson's hair, allowing the kid to drop to the floor of the elevator in a heap. "You probably won't be needing them where you're going. You won't be needing _this_ either." He yanked the kid's phone out of Grayson's hand.

Confused, disoriented, and scared, Grayson wanted to ask where they were going, but couldn't bring himself to speak up. All he wanted to do was pull his jacket up over his head like a turtle shell and curl up into a ball in the corner of the elevator and wait for things to magically resolve themselves. Knowing that wasn't likely to happen, he found the strength to pull himself back up to his feet.

"It's rare that I'm tasked with a target _retrieval_ mission, rather than a target _elimination_ mission," Creeper murmured, crossing his arms again. "My targets don't tend to stay alive for very long around me. Stay on my good side, and you'll last longer than the others. Maybe."

Grayson was determined not to look at him, but his trembling knees illustrated just how scared he was. It was largely the elevator wall that was supporting him at this point. There was a defiant part of him that didn't want to be defeated so easily, a part of him that wanted to make this abduction difficult for Creeper to carry out. But at the same time, he didn't want to get Creeper angry.

The elevator doors opened on the eighth floor, the top floor just below the roof, which the elevator didn't reach. There didn't seem to be hospital rooms on this floor, which looked to be mostly devoted to storage and maintenance. Grayson felt something jab him between the shoulder blades.

"Get moving."

It felt like he was trying to walk through one of those inflatable bouncy castles. He could barely walk in a straight line, lumbering down the hallway in his exhausted state. Okay, well. Maybe he was exaggerating his exhaustion a bit. Maybe a lot. Maybe he wanted Creeper to think he really was _that_ tired.

"Pick up the pace." Creeper growled from close behind him. They were nearly at the end of the hall and about to turn the corner. Grayson did as he was told and walked faster, disappearing around the corner, vanishing from Creeper's line of sight for just a moment. "Don't-"

He was cut off as Grayson suddenly turned around and charged at him. Creeper gave no indication that he was going to move out of the way and just stood there, confident that his size alone would be enough to stop Grayson in his tracks. Instead, the kid dropped to his knees at the last second and slid along the linoleum floor between Creeper's legs, reaching up to snatch his phone back out of his hands. He turned the corner again and made a break for it back to the elevator, until

 _BANG_

A blazing round of gunfire flew past his leg. He felt something burn. The hem of his hospital gown was singed, and his leg was bleeding. Creeper had drawn one of his guns, its barrel continuing to smoke.

"That was your only warning." he uttered quietly. "I was ordered you to bring you in _alive_ , but they didn't say anything about _unharmed_."

Grayson's wounded leg began to shake under his weight. If it weren't for the adrenaline, it probably would've hurt a lot, even though he'd only been grazed. He stood there, heart pounding in his chest, louder than he'd ever felt it pound before. Creeper wasn't messing around.

Neither was he.

 _(go big or go home)_

Grayson took off again, this time running down a second hallway that branched off, instead of heading towards the elevator.

"Stop!" He heard Creeper roar. He didn't hear footsteps follow him and assumed Creeper had taken on that gross mist/fog/steam/whatever form again. The cloud of black vapor swirled around him and condensed at the end of the hall ahead of Grayson, reforming into Creeper, his gun already drawn and ready to fire. Grayson stopped in his tracks, his bare feet squeaking against the floor as he slid to a halt. Before Creeper could pull the trigger, his arm was unnaturally twisted upward.

"What-"

 _(my turn)_

 _BANG_

Creeper involuntarily fired into the ceiling. Chunks of sheetrock, plasmetal, concrete, and plaster rained down from above, landing directly onto him. The door nearest to Grayson flew open and he took it, slamming it shut behind him while Creeper was distracted. The door had taken him to a short stairway that led to a second, heavier door, which he burst through.

At first he was confused, having believed he'd end up in another hallway. He found himself on the roof, standing on a small square of concrete surrounded by insulation gravel strewn all over the rooftop. It was chilly up here, and the wind was strong. The clouds overhead were low and heavy. He heard a door slam below him, and he quickly shut and locked the door that led up to the roof. Already Creeper had opened fire against the locked door. He could feel sharp, heavy artillery batter against his mental projection that held the door shut. As he stumbled across the roof, bare feet digging through the rough gravel towards the center, he could feel himself beginning to pass out from all the telekinesis he'd been forced to perform over the past few minutes. The edges of his field of vision were growing dark, and his face was feeling damp and clammy, like he was about to throw up.

 _(my phone)_

 _Oh, my phone._ He couldn't put weight on his injured leg anymore. Lying down in the gravel and curling up into a ball seemed like the most appealing thing in the world right now.

 _Call the police, dummy._

 _(fine)_

It took him a few tries to unlock his phone with how bad his hands were shaking. Somewhere, dimly, in the back of his mind, he could feel that half of the door downstairs had been obliterated by Creeper, who had resorted to his smoky form to reach the second and final door that stood between him and his target. He dialed the police.

"911, what is your emergency?"

"I need help," he panted. He didn't realize he was being vague; he thought it was perfectly clear that he was about to be attacked and possibly killed by Creeper at any moment.

"What's wrong? How can we help you?"

"I-uh-" Why didn't they know what was happening? Didn't they realize that he was in trouble? Why were they asking stupid questions? _Oh. They don't know._ "I'm being chased. I really need help right now. I'm stuck here."

"Who's chasing you?"

"I'm-hngh-" He clutched at his forehead. Creeper was wailing pretty hard against that door. He was getting a migraine from it.

"Hello? What's your name? Where are you?"

"Grayson Park."

"Grayson, where are you now? Who's chasing you?"

The door handle had broken off and clattered loudly against the concrete sill along the base of the rooftop door, nearly breaking his concentration.

"Grayson, who's chasing you? Where are you at?"

"I'm on the roof-" he said with a great deal of effort. "I can't keep the door shut."

"Don't worry Grayson," the operator said as calmly as possible. "The police are on their way. They'll be there very soon. Can you tell me who's chasing you?"

"Don't know his name,"

"Can you guess? Can you describe him?"

"I...what-" _Describe?_

"Can you tell us what he looks like?"

"Big. With a black jacket."

"Anything else?"

"...I think his name is Creeper."

The door broke down. Grayson heard two heavy, metallic thuds. It sounded like Creeper had tossed his guns aside. _Good. He probably doesn't have any more._ His knees collapsed and the gravel rushed up to meet him. Creeper cruelly let him fall before picking him up by the collar.

"Under normal circumstances, I'd be _much_ more annoyed with you," Creeper scolded, "But it turns out you found a shortcut to the roof. If you hadn't run off, I would have taken us the long way around." He reached inside his coat and pressed a button on a pager. From above the low-lying cloudbank, an aircraft slowly descended to the far side of the roof. It was big, black, and batlike, with nearly silent engines and jagged, angular wings. A hatch opened in the underside, with a metal boarding platform telescoping out of it towards them. Creeper turned to approach it, but found Tracer already standing there.

"Reapie, I didn't know you got a new ship!" she beamed, both pistols drawn. "It's lovely. Love the color. But I _hardly_ think it's safety-approved for kids. Mind letting him down?"

Creeper withdrew his hand from his coat, holding another gun. _Alright, how many of those does he got?_ Grayson found himself pulled up against Creeper, who'd wrapped an arm around his throat, using him as a human shield.

"I've got places to be, and you're in the way." Creeper growled in response.

"Oh my. This is quite the pickle." Tracer shrugged. "Guess we'll just have to see how good of a shot I really am!"

 _Say what now-?_


	5. Guns 'n Bruises

Reaper's mask protected him from the smoke and dust kicked up by the battle. Each shot that failed to connect with the opponent either fired off into the foggy night sky or explosively impacted against the roof of the hospital. The air was thick with haze and bolts of light as Tracer and Reaper fired round after round of ammunition at each other. From far below where pedestrians and hospital evacuees were standing, it looked like a fireworks show.

Having long since learned that firing at Tracer _directly_ was a waste of ammo, Reaper began predicting her patterns and shooting in the spot he assumed she'd Blink to. This led to several near-misses and even grazes on her part. Some missed shots created craters in the roof that sent reddish, smoking gravel flying in all directions like shrapnel. The roof was riddled with these craters, as well as discarded shotguns. Using the kid as a shield was helpful, but it only gave him one free hand with which to draw and fire a gun. All Tracer could do was dodge, which she was _infuriatingly_ good at doing, even with the wide spread that his shotguns created when fired.

"I could keep this up all night, Edgar Allen Slow," she taunted. If he had eyes, he would've rolled them. He knew her taunts were empty since she couldn't easily fire back at him without risk of hitting the civilian. Every time he drew a new gun from within his coat, he kept the kid facing wherever she Blinked so that she couldn't take advantage of him while he was unprepared. All he needed was for her to get away from the loading dock of the ship so he could board it. If he didn't have to keep his prisoner in tow, he would've just dissolved into his wraith form and entered the ship without a problem.

He emptied his gun in Tracer's direction, his bullets parting the surrounding fog as they shot off into the night. When none of them hit their target, he flung his shotgun at her. It struck the hull of his ship and bounced off, spinning over the safety rail down to the street below. He reached into his coat again but Tracer wised up to his tactics and Blinked around behind him, firing at his back. A turquoise beam of light struck him between his shoulder blades and propelled him forward, further than she had intended. He twisted in the air and landed on his side, hard, driving a deep trough in the gravel all the way up to the foot of the platform that led into his aircraft.

He rose to his feet, leaving the kid lying in the gravel to stand over him, both guns drawn now. He laughed menacingly as he fired off twice as many shots as before, forcing Tracer to react and dodge much faster than she had gotten used to earlier in their fight. She was covered with numerous cuts and scratches, both from the firepower she narrowly avoided, and from the rocks and debris that were thrown up. Since she had Blinked around him, she had made the mistake of removing herself from being in between Reaper and the aircraft, now allowing him to board it. He thought about grabbing the kid and getting on the ship, but knew that if he paused even for a second to snag his quarry by the collar, Tracer would use it as an opportunity to fire on him again.

She was beginning to tire, and the lights of her chronal accelerator were fading. She wouldn't be able to Blink if her accelerator overheated and would either have to take cover, or get blown to pieces. Either way, Reaper had this in the bag.

Until a huge blue fist struck him from the side, sending him flying sideways into the concrete safety barrier that surrounded the roof. Both guns were knocked out of his hands, one of them misfiring into the ground, sending off a spray of grit and dust. It was that damned _monkey_.

"'Bout time you showed up," Tracer complained, both pistols aimed at Reaper as she stepped closer. The gorilla oafishly cantered to the target, who was half-buried in the gravel where Reaper had left him, motionless. The monkey worriedly pawed at the kid for a moment, checking vitals or _whatever_ moronic thing passed in that ape's mind as a helpful gesture, before turning his attention back to Reaper. Both Tracer and the monkey raised their weapons towards him, Tracer's Pulse pistols and the ape's Tesla Cannon. He'd recently been on the receiving end of both of those armaments, the latter of which was already hissing and sizzling with lavender sparks in the hazy night air. There was no way he'd be able to take out both Overwatch agents and secure the target. He cursed inwardly, digging his claws into the concrete barrier behind him as he realized he'd failed another mission. His dark form dissolved into a smoggy plume of smoke that raced across the roof in a billowing tendril back towards the ship, snaking up the boarding ramp, which retracted behind him. The two Overwatch agents moved to stop him, but had no way of containing Reaper's wraith form with their bare hands, and could do nothing but watch in dismay as he escaped again. The engines to his ship roared to life, and rose up above the clouds again.

It started to rain.

" _Well_. You took your sweet time getting here!" Tracer teased Winston, punching him lightly on the arm.

"Apologies," said giant gorilla guiltily, rubbing the back of his head. "I didn't realize my cruiser needed gas. I had to siphon fuel off of other vehicles in the hangar once I realized I was out of juice."

"Good thing you got here when you did, though," she said as she pulled up the collar of her jacket to help protect against the rain, her once-spiky hair now beginning to droop. "My accelerator was just about to give out on me, and I wouldn't have had anywhere to take cover from Reaper." She approached Grayson, who was still lying half-conscious and battered among the rocks, her boots sloshing through the wet gravel. She knelt next to him, gently shaking his shoulder. Winston held his forearm over the two of them to block them from the rain.

"Hey. Hey. Luv. Are you alright? Can you hear me?" He moved slightly, his head turning only enough to look at her with a single pink eye, the other side of his face obscured by stones and his wet hair. _Alright, good, he's still alive._ She gently took his hand in hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "We're gonna get you outta here. We're going to take you somewhere safe, okay? Somewhere safe and considerably drier than here."

He blinked once, and then found the strength to give a small nod.

"Do you need help standing up?" Winston asked. Grayson nodded again. Tracer helped him up, still holding the same hand, but he couldn't put any weight on his injured leg. Winston winced in sympathy. "Did you hurt your leg just now, in the fight?"

"No," Tracer answered for him, "It was already like that."

"Here," Winston said as he scooped Grayson up with one arm. "Hold on tight."

The rooftop door flung open, startling all three of them as police officers poured out, guns drawn and pointed at Winston and Tracer.

"Freeze!" the commanding officer bellowed from the center of the group. "Drop your weapons!"

Winston and Tracer glanced at each other.

"I forgot the police had been called." Tracer said sheepishly. "I tuned out their broadcast during the fight."

Winston realized he was still holding Grayson, whom the police likely presumed had been abducted based on his 911 call.

"I think they think _we're_ the ones who attacked the hospital," Winston muttered back at her.

"Look," Tracer began, approaching the officers, "I think there's been a big misunderstanding, y'see, we're not the ones who-"

"I said freeze!" the officer yelled again. There was a chorus of audible clicks as each policeman readied his gun. It was a tense moment; neither Winston nor Tracer wanted to fight the police and further the idea that Overwatch was an uncontrollable crew of renegade superheroes.

The commanding officer was about to give the order to fire, when a bout of static flared up on all their communicators, including Tracer and Winston's channel. The police looked at each other, confused, before the static grew into the high head-splitting metallic shrieking that Tracer and Winston had grown used to. The officers broke rank and covered their ears, confused and nauseated by the frequency of the screeching. A crack broke across the surface of Tracer's goggles from the intensity of the noise. Winston took the opportunity to type something into a panel on his Tesla Cannon while the police were distracted. The violet sparks shifted into a bluish quartz color. He covered Grayson's eyes with his free hand.

"Tracer! Operation 7!" Winston warned, before pulling the trigger on his weapon. There was a dazzling flash of arcing electrical current. The acrid smell of burned ozone and hair filled Winston's nostrils as he set off his flash bomb, temporarily blinding the police. Switching his Tesla Cannon back to its normal mode, he tapped Tracer on the shoulder and headed towards the door. "Let's go." Winston had to cram in sideways to fit. The door shut behind them, and Grayson finally lost consciousness in Winston's arms. The screeching stopped.

"Great," Winston grunted as he squeezed through the door at the bottom of the stairwell. "Now the LA police are going to think we're the ones doing the kidnapping. This is not going to look good for Overwatch's recall."

"We'll set the record straight soon enough," Tracer said, peering around the corner to make sure there were no other officers down the hall. "C'mon, we're clear for the moment."

"I'm summoning the cruiser now," Winston informed her as he quickly typed his keypass information on a mini holovid. "We'll need to get to the south side of the third floor. We can jump from there and avoid whatever police force may be guarding the exits on the ground level."

"Righto."

"Were your goggles always cracked-?"

"Nope. Looks like Grayson's little distraction had some side effects."

"Interesting."

They took to the stairwell. Tracer set her pistols to STUN and took out the handful of officers waiting for them.

"Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" she said with every shot. "Nothing personal! We're the good guys, I promise!" They awkwardly stepped over the unconscious forms of the officers and continued down the multiple flights of stairs that led back to the third floor, which was still dark. Winston lead them past Grayson's room and down a different hall. They passed a cafe outlet at the end of the passage, now closed, and a huge set of windows that overlooked a fountain below. They could see the alternating blue and red flashes of police vehicles through the rain. A cone of light shining down from above indicated that there was probably a helicopter circling the building as well.

"Is it just me," Tracer wondered aloud, "Or did Reaper give up too easily?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Winston replied, poking his head around another corner. The coast was clear, so he continued leading them. "We're still not one hundred percent sure what his goal was, other than abducting Grayson. It may have just been that he couldn't fight off both of us without killing his hostage. He likely would've initiated his ' _Death Blossom_ '" -he sneered at that name "-if he didn't need to bring in Grayson alive. Does your accelerator have enough power to Blink one more time?"

She tapped her chronal accelerator a few times. "I think it's all cooled down now, why?"

They had stopped near another bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, this time facing a steep landscaped slope that separated the hospital from the highway. "Here," he handed her a flash grenade, smaller and more portable than the one his Tesla Cannon had generated on the roof. "The cruiser is going to meet us outside, right below us. Blink to the other side of the building and toss this grenade out the window. While the police are distracted with that, Blink back here and jump with me into the cruiser."

"Roger," she saluted, vanishing in a turquoise streak down the corridor. Winston turned to look out the window and saw the cruiser pull up, hovering a few feet or so above the ground. The top of the cruiser folded back like a convertible car, revealing a big deep front seat for Winston and a few smaller seats in the back for passengers. There was a muffled _kaboom_ from the other side of the building. Tracer returned almost immediately.

"Right, all the bobbies are distracted by your grenade. We're good to go."

"Excellent. Stand back for a second." Winston said, hefting his Tesla Cannon towards the window. He smashed the front of it against the glass like a battering ram, not wanting to create a big flashy scene that would draw the police's attention back to this side of the building. Great jagged plates of glass fell, littering both the floor and the asphalt down below. "Alright, follow me," he grunted, bracing himself before leaping from the window, wind rushing through his fur and armor before landing heavily in the cruiser, making it bounce up and down where it floated. He waited for Tracer to land (a bit more gracefully than he) in one of the rear seats. "Here, can you help me with him-" He lifted Grayson into the seat next to Tracer, who assisted buckling him in. The roof of the cruiser unfolded back over them and then lit up from the inside, various screens and buttons shimmering along the roof and around the windshield. "We're going to have to take the scenic route on the way back to the Watchpoint. You made me paranoid that Reaper might try to track us."

"Better safe than sorry," Tracer said, reclining her seat a bit to make herself comfortable. "Just so long as you put some tunes on." The lights on the cruiser's console were distorted thanks to the big jagged crack that ran through her goggles. She pushed them up to her forehead so that she didn't have to look at it. She saw how rough and torn her gloves were as she lowered her hands and glanced around at the rest of her. "Cor, Reaper sure did a number on me. Does this Watchpoint have running water yet, or is it still so new that we'll basically be camping? I'd fancy a bath when we get there."

"We've got water, electricity, and a bit of food."

"An entire cabinet full of peanut butter does not constitute as food."

"We have more than just peanut butter, I promise."

She looked over at Grayson, who was considerably more worse for wear. He was covered in bruises and abrasions, scrapes all over his face and hands and legs. His feet and knees were filthy, and the bandages on both kneecaps had been ripped off and now hung limply around his shins. The wound in his leg would need bandaging. She bit her lip, worried that Reaper may have actually landed on him when she shot him in the back. That couldn't have been fun. She reached out and held his hand again, wishing she could have done more to help him before, but glad that he was unconscious so that he didn't have to feel any pain for the time being. She felt something shift on her forehead. She pulled her goggles off with her free hand to examine them.

They were no longer cracked.


	6. Everyone Is Hungry

_**Author's Note: Thanks everybody for the reviews! I'm very happy that people are liking this story so far. I've had to split this chapter into two parts, so the second part should be coming soon. Yay!**_

* * *

Widowmaker wasn't fond of a lot of things. She wasn't fond of extensive traveling. She wasn't fond of the desert. She wasn't fond of Sombra. She wasn't fond of literally all of these things converging in a single, wholly unpleasant morning.

The industrial elevator she rode on was dark, save for the squares of light she passed at regular intervals as she descended deeper and deeper within the Chuckwalla mountains. The air was so dry here, practically _leeching_ all the moisture from her body where she stood. How could people stand to live in such an arid, salty, stony, featureless part of the world? France was much more tolerable. She'd take an autumn in Annecy over an American Southwest autumn any day. Hopefully she'd be allowed to return once this mission was over. The elevator slowed to a halt, the metal grilles scissoring away to allow her exit. The elevator bay led through a hallway with a very low ceiling that sloped downward even further under the mountains. More industrial lights embedded in the wall hummed noisily as she passed, their baleful yellowish hue turning her blue skin green.

A door slid out of the way to reveal a dimly lit living space. A semi-circular couch was sunk into the floor around an oval coffee table with a holovid screen opposite it. There was a kitchenette on the other side of the space, and a metal ship's ladder that led up to an archway that presumably led to the underground aircraft hangar. Other doorways notched into the metal paneled walls led off to what she assumed were individual barracks and surveillance rooms. This was her first time at Talon's Chuckwalla outpost, so she wasn't familiar with it just yet.

But she _was_ familiar with the purple lump on the couch, her headphones in and tapping away at a pink holovid floating above where she lay. Widowmaker rolled her eyes, having not expected Sombra to be assigned to this base as well. As if knowing Widowmaker was glaring at her from behind the curved sofa, Sombra tugged out an earbud, glancing around.

"¿ _Que?_...Ah! _Widowmaker_." she smiled, giving her a small wave with her glowing nails, some odd pixels floating off of them as she did. "I would've thought you'd come in through the hangar."

"It was more efficient to let my team drop me off, rather than force them to land and risk drawing attention." Widowmaker said, striding past Sombra towards the kitchen. She opened the fridge but curled her lip when she found nothing but junk food and soda, most of them with Spanish labels. _Typique_. "How long have you been stationed here?" she asked, without looking at Sombra, moving away from the fridge to open the cupboards. Could there be a protein bar, a dehydrated salad, anything _but_ junk food? Long distance traveling always made her hungry and irritable. ...Well, _more_ irritable.

"Since about...late afternoon yesterday," Sombra replied, twisting in her seat towards Widowmaker, letting an arm hang over the back of the sofa against the metallized floor. "I got here a little bit before Gabe did."

Widowmaker stood up, having searched in vain for something healthy in a lower cabinet, finally facing Sombra directly. "Reaper is here? _Porquoi_?"

"Por _que_ ," Sombra answered, "He was in the neighborhood and Talon had a mission that suddenly needed doing. He hasn't come back yet."

"When did he leave?"

"At about..." her eyes darting towards the ceiling as she counted on her fingers. "One in the morning. Apparently he had to go take care of someone else's failed mission."

"Strange." Widomaker said, leaning back against the counter, her eyes narrowing.

"What brings _you_ to Cali, _chica_?" Sombra asked, cocking her head.

"Classified."

"Don't be that way. What if we're on the same mission?"

"Then you'd already know what the mission was."

"Is it the mission with the train to Phoenix?"

"...Yes." There was no point in being secretive about it if Sombra already knew what was up.

"Bingo. I was expecting another agent to join me on the mission, but if I'd known it was _you_ , I would've tidied the place up a bit so that I didn't have to listen to you complain about _'zee deplorable state of zees dump.'_ "

Widowmaker bristled. "We've been partnered up again?"

"Looks like it."

" _Fantastique_."

"The rest of the lugs we're in charge of should be arriving in small groups between tomorrow and the departure day," Sombra said, activating her holoscreen with the mission's details. "So, lucky for you, it won't just be the two of us."

"And what exactly is your involvement in this plan?"

"Classified." Sombra smirked, then put her headphones back in and returned to her holovid game.

Widowmaker rolled her eyes and resumed foraging around the kitchen. The base had been vacant for months before she and Sombra had shown up, so there wasn't much for her to find. She settled for a glass of water, which she sipped moodily, drumming her fingers on the counter top. She'd need to keep a close watch on Sombra during the mission to curtail any of her self-serving shenanigans. She would not be blamed for another failed assignment.

The water in her glass rippled as the whole base vibrated, signaling the docking of an incoming aircraft.

"Gabe's back," Sombra said without looking up from her screen. Widowmaker remained where she was, though she was curious to know what Reaper had been up to. A door _whooshed_ open from the balcony above, followed by the sound of heavy boots stomping on the narrow metal steps down to the main level.

" _Hola_ ," Sombra called out, still not looking up. "How big of a mess did Takyama leave for you?"

"Takyama?" Widowmaker wondered aloud, just as Reaper reached the bottom of the steps. His back was smoking heavily, plumes of black vapor swirling off of it like dry ice in an updraft. He must be healing from an injury.

"Woah, what happened to you?" Sombra asked, removing her headphones again when she realized that Reaper was literally fuming.

Reaper growled, his clawed gauntlets balled up into fists. "Overwatch got there first." He stomped past Widowmaker and threw the fridge open, its door slamming into the cabinets beside it. His neck cracked loudly when he turned to glare at Sombra. " _¿Tomaste toda mi cerveza?_ " he demanded angrily.

"I did _not_ drink it all," Sombra shot back, offended. "I had _maybe_ three over the course of two days. Relax."

Reaper slammed the fridge shut again, leaving claw marks in the door. Widowmaker, waiting for Reaper's tantrum to subside, finished her glass.

"When did you get here?" Reaper asked her.

"Just now."

"For the cargo train assignment?"

" _Oui_."

"Great. All three of us have been assigned to it now."

"All three of us?" Sombra asked.

"Yes. I was asked to make a second attempt on the Takyama mission, which leads directly into the train to Phoenix," he grouched as he approached the sofa, landing heavily on it on the side furthest away from Sombra. He put his boots up on the table and clasped his hands behind his head, having every intention of relaxing between now and whenever Talon found out where Overwatch had hidden the little brat.

Widowmaker set her glass down. "What was the Takyama mission?"

Reaper sighed loudly, letting his head tilt back against the cushion of the sofa. "Long story."

"Oh come _on_ ," Sombra fussed. "None of us have anything better to do. What's the scoop?"

Reaper's sigh crushed itself to a throaty growl of annoyance. He knew Sombra would pester him for details until he gave in (or killed her, though he was under contract _not_ to do that).

"Fine." He dug around in his coat for a holovid capsule, and tossed it to Sombra when he found it. She activated it, allowing a holoscreen to float up into view for all of them. She prodded the screen with a single nail, quickly flicking through paragraph after paragraph faster than Widowmaker was able to read them.

* * *

Grayson woke up, and immediately wished he didn't. The sheets of the bunk bed he lay on were scratchy. Or maybe the layer of grit and dust on him made everything _feel_ scratchy. The sheets smelled funny. The pillow smelled funny. Everything felt and smelt like it had been in a linen closet for years, stiffened and stale with age. Pain radiated from every direction and he couldn't remember why or how. His head hurt. His knees and feet hurt. His face hurt. He hurt too much to roll over. He continued to lie there, on his side. It was dark. Things remained dark as he cried for a bit, confused and disoriented. He fell asleep again.

He woke up a second time, some hours later, with a much clearer head. Everything was still sore, but he now understood that it was coming from his body. He cracked his eyes open and found himself staring at a bare metal wall, before rolling onto his back to stare at the underside of the bunk bed over him. He sat up carefully so that he didn't bump his head on the upper bed, but he wasn't nearly tall enough to reach it from where he sat. It was dark, with an orange globe of light plugged into an outlet in the wall on the opposite side of the room to serve as a nightlight. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that there were two or three more bunk beds in this room too, all empty. There were trunks –no, dressers –at the foot of each bed. He slowly made his way to the edge of the bed and slid off of it, his bare feet meeting with cold metal. All the dressers were unlocked, but just as empty as the other bunk beds. He looked back at the bunk he'd woken up on and saw that the bed was still made. Whoever had brought him here had just set him down on top of the bed without tucking him in or anything. That probably worked out for the best, since being all tangled up in blankets and sheets would've hurt a lot more.

His hand found a switch on the wall that opened the door, flooding the room with light. It wasn't a super bright light, but it was brighter than what he was used to, and made him squint. The door led to a hallway evenly lit with artificial lighting. He wondered what time of day it was. He pressed his hand to the nearest door switch and found himself in a bathroom. He wasn't quite tall enough to get a good look at himself in the mirror, but there was a full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door. He was a _mess_ , filthy and bruised and haggard. He reached up to pat at his matted white hair and flinched, hissing a little, as he accidentally patted where Creeper had scraped his scalp with his claws.

Remembering Creeper jogged his memories of the rest of that night at the hospital. The chase, the fight, the police ( _I think, I don't really remember that, I might be making that up_ ). He trembled a little, tears building up in his eyes and clouding his vision. Blaming the temperature for his shivering, he scrubbed his eyes with his sleeve. He was still only wearing his hospital gown and his jacket. Socks would be _great_. He used the bathroom then washed his hands, watching the water wash the rusty red dust off his hands and down the drain. He realized he'd probably feel a lot better if he could take a shower, but he had no other clothes to change into. He left the bathroom and continued down the hall. _Alright, where even am I? This doesn't look like a hotel, or even really like a hospital..._ He'd never been in a place like this. The walls were largely metal, with lighting ensconced above and along the walls. It felt almost like a hallway leading up to a science lab in a movie.

The passage led to a dark room that was taller than it was wide. Grayson could make out a cluster of chairs around a sofa in the middle. In the corner was a spiral staircase that led to a loft above. A bluish glow from the loft indicated that it was full of computer monitors.

"Hello?" Grayson called up there, timidly. There wasn't a response. "Hello?" he called again, louder this time just in case.

"Hello," someone responded on the far side of the room, an open archway lighting up. Grayson didn't recognize the voice, but approached anyway. The arch led into a big, bright kitchen. His stomach immediately growled at the thought of being so close to food. A black quartz counter wrapped the whole room, with a large island in the center. It looked like the island had the main faucet, with the stove opposite it along the wall. The cabinetry was white and the appliances were brushed steel, making the room feel even brighter. He looked and felt like some sort of filthy cave troll that had wandered into a showroom kitchen. There was nobody here.

"Hi?"

"Hello," the voice said again, a cool female voice. "I'm happy to see you have woken up. The others were concerned."

"Who-" Grayson kept looking around, poking his head around the corner of the island and opening cabinets to find the source of the voice. "Who's there? Where're you?"

"I am Athena, the program that operates this compound."

"Oh!" Grayson said, standing up straight and addressing the ceiling now, assuming that's where the voice was coming from. "Hi Athena. Who's kitchen is this?" He'd meant to ask 'Where am I?' but the thought of food derailed his question, being more concerned with who to obtain permission from to start making himself something to eat.

"This is the kitchen for Watchpoint: Los Angeles," Athena informed him. "It has been recently renovated."

"What's a Watchpoint?"

"An outpost for Overwatch activiti-"

"Overwatch?!" Grayson exclaimed, talking over Athena as she continued to define Watchpoints. "Why'm I here? Am I in trouble?"

"Winston brought you here twenty-seven hours ago to allow you to recuperate."

"What's 're-cooper-ate?'"

"To improve in health."

"Am I sick?"

"You appear to be, in Winston's words, 'roughed up.'"

"Where's Winston now?"

"He is currently asleep in his quarters. Do you need me to wake him-"

"No no no no no, that's okay, you don't gotta wake him up," Grayson said quickly. "But I do wanna ask if it's okay if I make something to eat?"

"Of course you may. Winston instructed me to initiate my automated culinary program once you woke up, but he neglected to remember that he had yet to install any of those programs in Watchpoint: Los Angeles' operating system."

"...Mmmkay I only know like, six of those words."

"I won't be able to make breakfast for you."

"Oh! That's okay, I totes got this covered," Grayson said, pushing up his sleeves. "You guys got cereal?"

"We have oatmeal."

"Gross."

"It _is_ cereal."

"It _is_ gross. What about pancake mix?"

There was a pause as Athena searched the index of items in the pantry. "Yes, we have pancake mix."

"Score. Does Winston like pancakes?"

"He has been known to eat them on occasion. He likes them with peanut butter."

"You guys got peanut butter?"

"Most of our pantry is peanut butter."

"I need something to stand on, I can't really reach the counters from here."

"There is a short stepladder in the pantry."

"Sweet."

Pancakes were one of the few things Grayson knew how to make. Being nine, his palette never really strayed beyond cereal, pancakes, mac & cheese, or whatever else he could whip up super instantly when his parents weren't home. He'd often come home from school alone and was responsible for making himself something to eat to tide him over until dinner. Pancakes should have been a breeze to make, but he wasn't used to Overwatch's self-cleaning electric stove.

"...'Kay. How does this thing work? Do I need a pan or anything?"

"You can pour the batter directly on the stove's surface, which will heat to the appropriate temperature."

"...Alright," he said, tensely. He wanted to make a good first impression. Burning down the Watchpoint might not be the best way to do that. He poured the batter onto the stove as best he could, trying to make even circular dollops. They all came out crooked, but they would (hopefully) taste fine. "Does Winston like anything else with his breakfast?"

"He is fond of bananas."

"Do we got some of those too?"

"Yes." A panel in the center of the island slid away, allowing a tray of bananas to rise up.

"Oh cool, thanks. Does he like these in his pancakes?"

"Yes, with the peanut butter."

"Gotcha." He opened the nearest drawer to search for a knife. There were some small steak knives and a cutting mat. Steak knives seemed like overkill for bananas, but given everything he'd dealt with in the past few days, he thought could handle a little knife. ...Until he nicked himself. "Uh oh," he muttered weakly.

"Is something the matter?"

"Just cut myself. It's fine." He washed his hands in the sink. "Where can I get bandaids?"

"They can be located here," Athena said as a drawer popped open. Grayson found bandages of all different sizes, as well as some burn ointment and a miniature fire extinguisher. The bandages were sticky, and he ended up messing up three of them before he successfully wrapped a bandage around his finger. "I suggest the knife and cutting board you were just using be washed and sanitized before further use," Athena said.

"Why? I didn't bleed on it."

"It is better to err on the side of caution."

Something smelled like it was burning.

"What's bur- _crap_ -!" Grayson raced to the stove, where the pancakes were sizzling and smoking in a charred lake of scorched batter. He had forgotten to flip them. A smoke alarm began to go off. "Crap crap crap crap crap," he muttered frantically, trying to dig his spatula under the mess to flip it over. "Athena, can you please stop the fire alarm?"

"I am not in control of the fire alarm, it is a feature of the stove."

Grayson had managed to peel the smoking plaques of burnt-on pancake batter and tossed them in the garbage bin next to the island.

"Why did you not throw the burning food in the sink?" Athena asked.

"Because then I'd have to clean it out. It's gonna get thrown in the trash anyways."

"The garbage bin is on fire."

" _What_." He could smell the fire before he saw it, the acrid stench of burning plastic and paper.

Winston had been woken by the fire alarm and rushed on all fours to the kitchen. Grayson heard his heavy footfalls approaching and ducked under the island out of view. The kitchen was hazy with smoke, so Winston padded over and flicked the switch over the stove that turned on the fan to suck it out of the room. Noticing the garbage can was smoldering, he took the miniature fire extinguisher from the safety drawer (which Grayson had left open) and put out the small fire. The alarm stopped, and Winston set the extinguisher on the island.

"Athena?" Winston said, "Who was in the kitchen just now? Was it Tracer again?"

"Negative, it was Grayson."

Winston blinked, surprised. "He's awake?"

"Yes. He was attempting to make breakfast for you."

Winston turned just in time to see Grayson attempting to sneak out of the kitchen, who'd froze mid-step when he realized he'd been caught.

"Hi."

Winston smiled, happy to see him up and around. "Hello."


	7. Let's Backtrack A Little

The pneumatic hiss of air as the elevator capsule's doors slid apart ruffled Tracer's hair as he returned to the bunker. A handful of multicolored bags from LA's fashion district were held in the crook of her arm, carrying various articles of clothing she knew Emily was fond of, but were unavailable back home.

The day after the hospital duel with Reaper, Winston had insisted Tracer go out and continue her vacation and bring Emily up to speed on her trip. She didn't want to leave at first, not comfortable with leaving Winston alone with Grayson, who was still unconscious and unpredictable.

"We haven't the faintest idea what we're dealing with," she'd said. "You might need my help, just like I needed your help last night."

"Lena, please, I only intended to take you away from your vacation just to check out the museum explosion. You've gone far and above what I asked you to do. The boy is still unconscious and will likely stay that way for a few more hours at least." He handed her a brochure for the La Brea museum, knowing she'd been curious about that attraction for ages. "Go be a tourist. I'll let you know if anything pops up."

She reluctantly did as she was told, grabbing the brochure from Winston and exiting the Watchpoint, but not before telling him that she'd return the following day for an update, if there was one.

And now she was back, and given that the place wasn't up in flames, she apparently needn't have had worried as much as she did. She ascended a ramp that led from the elevator bay into the main living area, her tennis shoes thumping noisily against the metal rake until it leveled off. She was in her civilian attire for now, and had successfully blended in with the other tourists at the various attractions and shopping districts she'd visited. An L-shaped sofa faced what used to be a blank wall, but was now home to a large holoscreen that was playing the end credits to a movie. Winston's massive form could be seen from over the rear of the sofa, slumped over and asleep, his back facing her. She glanced at her watch, puzzled, since it really wasn't all that late. Winston wasn't known to go to bed early.

She set her bags down in the kitchen, doing what she could to prevent them from crinkling loudly, and tiptoed back to the living area. She poked her head around the couch and found Winston on his side, snoring softly. On the floor beneath him lay Grayson, who'd been wrapped up in a blanket, also asleep, an empty bowl (presumably once full of popcorn) laying next to him. One of Winston's hands lay on Grayson's shoulder.

 _Oh. Oh no. I can't. I can't not. I can't not take a picture of this. It's too precious._ _Angela may or may not combust on the spot when she sees this._

She pulled out her phone and quickly snapped a picture, but forgot to take off the flash.

* * *

The majority of breakfasts in Winston's adult life were spent alone, so he greatly welcomed Grayson's company. After scraping off the mess Grayson had made, Winston set about making a new stack of pancakes. The boy offered to help, but Winston thought it would be better for everyone if he sat this one out.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but you're still pretty worn out from the other night. I don't mind making breakfast."

"You sure?" Grayson asked, now sitting on a bar stool at the island. "You've already done a lot for me already. Okay _well_ , I _guess_ you've done a lot for me already. I don't really know what's going on. I don't remember a whole lot."

"Well," Winston started, perplexed, not expecting forgetfulness to be a side effect of... _whatever_ was happening. "What _can_ you remember?"

"...Starting from where?"

"From the beginning, I suppose. Tell me about yourself."

"Uhh..." Grayson began, resting his chin in his hands as he thought of where to start. His legs kicked back and forth where he sat. "Well, uh, I'm nine, I'm in the fourth grade, uh...gonna get Honor Roll on my next progress report card probably...uh..." He hadn't expected the list of his own character traits to end so soon. How boring.

"Do you play any sports? Have any hobbies?" Winston asked, his back still turned as he mixed banana slices in with the batter.

"I do a lotta soccer. I like soccer."

"Really? Outdoors?"

"Well, yeah, where else would you play...?"

"I just, well, assumed-"

"I mean, I gotta wear a lotta sunscreen when I go outside cuz I'm albino and whatever."

"I hope you don't get teased for being albino."

"Nah not really. I used to get made fun of but like...I dunno, after they run out of jokes about how pale I am it's like...that's all they got." He fell silent for a moment as he did a another mental review of his himself, hoping to find some more interesting facts to share the second time to round out whatever profile Winston was gathering on him. "Oh, uh, I make HoloTube videos with my cousin, too. She's not, like, popular on HoloTube or anything but she's got like a butt ton of videos on there. She's a big D-Va fan too, she dressed up like for Halloween last year."

Winston snorted at that. He turned around and passed a plate of peanut butter banana pancakes to Grayson. "Here. Eat up. Eat as much as you want."

"Thanks!" Grayson said, immediately digging in. "Can you tell me 'bout you?" he asked around a mouthful of pancakes. "Like, how can you...y'know, talk? How'd that happen?"

"Well," Winston said, adjusting his glasses as he thought of how to simplify his story so that Grayson could understand it. "I guess you could say I was made that way."

"Are you an Omnic?"

"No no, I'm a gorilla, but I was made by scientists. On the _moon_ ," he added dramatically.

"The _moon_?"

"Yes. I used to live in a lab on the moon."

"But—how'd you get _here_?"

"I built a rocket. All by myself."

"Nooo,"

"Yes, I did. Really. It didn't last long once I hit the Earth's atmosphere but that's how I got here."

"That's so cool!" Grayson said, enthusiastically. "Does that mean you're like...technically an alien gorilla?"

"I –uh –I guess so," Winston stammered, having never thought of it that way. "But above all, I'm a scientist."

"That's really cool," Grayson said around another mouthful of pancakes. "What was the moon like?"

"Not very interesting. Very flat, very gray. I used to stare out of the windows of the lab I lived in at the Earth. I've wanted to live here since I was your age."

"Like, _here_ here, in LA?"

"Well, not specifically in LA. Anywhere on Earth. Anywhere on Earth was better than that lab in the end. I've only come to Los Angeles recently to help establish this new Watchpoint." He was picking and choosing parts of his story to divulge; he'd saved the more harrowing parts of his biography for later. Winston wanted to keep the tone light for now.

"What's a Watchp—oh! Nevermind, Athena told me."

"She's very helpful."

"Where do you live if you don't live in LA?"

"I live in a different Watchpoint in Gibraltar, in Spain."

"Is that far away?"

"Very, it's across the ocean."

"Which one?"

"The Atlantic. Don't you take geography?"

"Wassat."

"Where you study the locations of countries and continents...?"

"Oh, no, that's next year probably. I guess. I dunno." He took another bite of pancakes. "What time is it right now? There's no windows here, so I can't tell, like, what time of day it is."

"It's a little after ten in the morning," Winston said, moving to stand across from him on the other side of the island. "You slept for a whole day after the incident at the hospital."

"I feel like I got hit by a truck."

"You _look_ like you got hit by a truck, if you don't mind me saying so. I think Tracer came back with something new for you to wear yesterday, if you wanted to wash up when you were done eating."

"Tracer?"

"Yes, she was there too."

"No, I mean, I don't know who that is."

"She's the Overwatch agent with the...you know, the uh—" He gestured with his hands "-Spiky hair, the goggles, the chronal accelerator, the accent-"

"Is she the _'cheers love, cannoli's here'_ girl?"

"Yes, but it's 'calvary.'"

"I forgot she was here too. Are there other Overwatch people here?"

"Not yet. Until now, there hasn't been a reason for very many Overwatch agents to congregate in this part of the country."

"What do you mean, 'until now?'"

"Well, clearly Talon is planning something, what with that incident at the museum, then that abduction attempt with you immediately afterward. We may need a few more people on our team around here if we're going to get to the bottom of this."

Grayson frowned. "I kinda wanna get to the bottom of this too. I don't know what's happening. At all. About any of this."

"I...I can imagine this has been quite an ordeal for you." Winston said, hiding his disappointment. He was hoping Grayson may actually have some answers for him as to what was going on. "It would be very helpful to me, and to the rest of Overwatch, if you could tell me what happened at the museum and the hospital, before Tracer and I got there."

Grayson turned away slightly in his seat, defensively. "I don't remember a whole lot."

"What can you recall?"

"I rememberrrr..." he trailed off, squinting into the middle distance as he sorted through his fragmented memories. "I remember trying to go to sleep, but then I could tell that someone else was in the room, so I grabbed my stuff and ran out of there...uhh...Creeper was there-"

"Reaper."

"Whuh,"

"His name is _Reaper_ , not Creeper."

"Same thing. Anyway he was there, I kept slamming doors on him so that he couldn't follow me but he kept busting through anyway. Shot me in the leg right here-" he pointed to one of his fresher bandages wrapped around his calf "-But I kept running...and then I somehow got on the roof."

"Is that all you can remember?"

"Pretty much. I remember the police showed up...and you did a thing that was super bright and then I don't remember after that." He took another bite out of his pancakes, wanting to busy himself with something other than recalling what had happened.

"Well," Winston began, taking a bite of his own stack. "Between the explosion at the museum and the point at which we brought you back here, Tracer and I were able to gather some information as to why Talon might be targeting you."

"I thought Reaper was targeting me?"

"He is, he's working for Talon. They're...well, they're the bad guys." He was oversimplifying again.

"Why're bad guys targeting me?"

"I'm not one hundred percent sure just yet, but Tracer and I have a few theories."

"'Theories?'"

"Ideas."

"Oh."

"There was a traffic camera outside of the museum that recorded the explosion."

"... _No there wasn't._ " Grayson said, with a bit more force than he intended.

"...Yes, there was," Winston said. "Tracer was able to track it down."

"How? I-the police said they were broken."

"Did the police say they were broken...or did _you_ break them?"

There was a tense pause. Grayson continued avoiding Winston's gaze.

"I don't want to talk about the museum."

* * *

"Aren't there _enough_ embarrassing pictures of me floating around the internet?" Winston grumbled on the way into the kitchen, the fur on the side of his head sticking up. This wasn't the first time Tracer had forgotten to turn the flash off in an attempt to take a picture of him while he was sleeping. She followed close behind him, carrying his glasses, which he'd forgotten in the other room. She slipped them onto his head from behind.

"You don't _understand_ , luv," she said, dramatically, as she sat on the edge of the counter. "The _lighting_ , the _composition_ , the _mise en scene_. It was too perfect. See, look," She shoved her phone in his face, which was much too bright for him to read immediately. "Mercy's going nuts over it."

" _Please_ tell me you're using a secure channel. I don't want unrestricted communication links that could tip Talon off to this new base."

"It's secure if there's a little padlock with a crossed-out purple skull, right?"

"Right."

"Then we're alright."

"Good." The pantry opened, revealing a rotating rack of several peanut butter jars. He lazily reached out to the nearest one and unscrewed it, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back against the counter Tracer was sitting on.

"Soooo, how's our guest?"

"He's...precocious."

"You can say _cute_."

"Fine, he's _cute_. He's talkative. I was worried he'd be shy. You know I'm not good with kids."

"You don't scare nearly as many kids as you think you do," she said, rolling her eyes. "There was that _one time_ you frightened that girl but _honestly_ she was such a fidgety little thing, she'd likely overreact to anything." She nudged his shoulder with her toe. "I wish you wouldn't take stuff like that so seriously. There are loads of people that like you. One person shouldn't be able to outweigh that."

"I know, I know," he said, digging deeper into his jar.

"Did you two watch a movie together?"

"Oh-" he glanced back towards the living room. The holovid had ceased playing the credits, and had returned to the main menu screen of the movie he and Grayson had been watching. "Yes. I thought he could use a distraction."

"How's he...I dunno," she glanced around the room as she chose her words. "How is he doing? Is he healing alright?"

"He limps a little. I offered to help him change his bandages but he declined."

"When are we getting that medical supply shipment from Mercy?"

"Tomorrow, I expect. It's not a huge package. We can use whatever is in it to instantly patch him up, since all his wounds are superficial."

"...Have you talked to him about the hospital? About Reaper?"

"Hmmgh." His sigh turned into a dissatisfied grumble. "A little bit. He's very defensive about it. He claims he doesn't remember much about the affair."

"Poor little bugger is probably just scared. It's easier to deal with it if you can pretend it never happened."

"I didn't want to push it. I think I was starting to make him uncomfortable."

"Did...well, did _stuff_ happen? You know, like when you play the traffic footage? _Spooky_ stuff?"

"A little bit."

* * *

Winston was taken aback slightly, having not expected the museum altercation to be a touchy subject. Grayson had stopped eating, but was gripping his fork tightly. Winston had little to no experience with people, let alone children, and was unsure of what to do or say. How do you pry sensitive information out of someone without distressing them? If Winston pushed the kid too far, would Grayson's budding psychokinesis explosively lash out in defense? He carefully reached over the island and placed his big heavy hand over Grayson's, hoping the gesture came across as protective and not awkward.

"I'm sorry. I know this is very difficult for you. I wouldn't ask you about it if it wasn't important, though. There are some dangerous people that are trying to take you away, and I want to know why so that we can stop them." He could feel Grayson tense up under his hand. The boy gulped audibly, but didn't pull away.

"It's scary."

"I know. I'm sorry." Winston gave his hand (what he hoped was) a reassuring squeeze.

"I really really liked Mr. Tani."

Winston blinked, recalling the details of the museum explosion. That Talon agent Genndy Takyama was undercover as Grayson's teacher under the alias 'Reagan Tani.'

"Were you and Mr. Tani close?" he ventured.

"Yeah." Grayson mumbled after a moment, his voice cracking. "He was really cool."

"How so?"

"I dunno...he was just really chill. He was really nice to me. He was nice to everyone. I liked him a lot. A lot more than the teacher he was subbing for. In my class, we get stars every time we do something right, like answer a question right or pick up trash or whatever. And if we get a hundred stars, we get a pizza. We had pizza parties all the time when he was teaching. And he got the principal to let us use holovid games in math to help us do long division because that crap is _hard_."

"It sounds like he worked hard to get you and your class to like him."

"Yeah."

"It sounds like you don't like him anymore?" Winston fished, but pushed Grayon a little further than he had intended. Grayson had put his hands up over his face and was trying to contain himself. Winston waited patiently for Grayson to get a handle on his emotions.

"I don't know what happened. I don't know why he got all...mean." Grayson continued. "He wasn't like that when he asked me to show him how I could move stuff. He thought it was cool. He said it was really cool and that I should practice it more and show him if it got any better."

"You can move things?" Winston asked, even though he already had a good idea as to what Grayson was talking about.

"Yeah, like...I dunno, for a long time, I could make little stuff move. Really little stuff. Little race cars and light switches. I didn't think it was anything cool until Mr. Tani thought it was cool. I thought it was normal stuff that everyone could do."

"Do you mean, you could move these things without touching them?"

"Yeah."

"Did your parents know you could do this stuff?"

"Not really. I mean, I showed them, but I don't think they thought it was real. I think they thought it was a prank or something, because I couldn't do it all the time."

"How did Mr. Tani know?"

"My cousin's HoloTube channel. She posts dumb videos of me there all the time. One time she posted a video of me making her math book slide off of her desk. That video got a lotta views."

"And Mr. Tani saw this video and immediately thought it was real?"

"He asked me to meet him after school one time, when he first started being our sub teacher. He asked me to do it again with one of his books, so I did. He thought it was really cool. He would bump up my grades if I could show him that I could lift heavier stuff, but heavy stuff made my tired. It hurts my head when I move heavy things."

Winston did what he could to appear concerned and engaged, but his mind was elsewhere. The scientist in him was running through all the possible scenarios that could explain why Grayson had psychokinetic abilities, but none of them added up. How was this kid generating this kind of power? Through what means was Grayson's mental energies being manifested in the physical world, and how did the physics of that even work? He wished he'd thought to bring a notebook with him, something he could write on to record Grayson's abilities to study later. Grayson noticed that Winston was thinking hard about it, and it made him uncomfortable.

"I shouldn't have talked about it,"

"What?" Winston blinked, his mind returning to the conversation.

"You had the same look Mr. Tani had, when I'd tell him about the stuff I can do."

Winston's heart sank. "I'm sorry, I got caught up in it. I'm a scientist, remember? The stuff you can do is unique, really. I'm not anything like Mr. Tani, and neither is Tracer."

Grayson nodded and looked back down at his plate, but was clearly skeptical, and Winston couldn't blame him. After being (apparently) betrayed by an adult that he admired so much, it wasn't a mystery as to why Grayson was so wary about discussing his skills. Winston needed to ask one more thing before creating a clearer picture of what the situation was.

"Did Mr. Tani try to abduct you at the museum?"

Grayson continued staring at his plate, silent. Winston opened his mouth to ask if Grayson was okay, but paused when the lights began to flicker. The steel fork on the counter that Grayson had been using was slowly rolling up on itself, curling backwards into a tight spiral like a dying centipede. The fork unbent itself again and returned to its normal shape.

"Yeah," Grayson finally responded.

"May I ask one more thing?" Winston asked hesitantly, not wanting to push his luck.

Grayson didn't look up from his food. "Sure."

"I promise, it's the last thing for now."

"Kay."

"There's video footage, from the traffic camera, of you trying to get away from Mr. Tani. I didn't realize it was you though, because your hair was dark in the video, instead of white like it is now. Can you tell me a little bit about that?"

Grayson's brow was knit together in confusion as he looked up. "What?"

"Your hair was black in the footage, then it returned to white in the end, after Mr. Tani was, well- _disabled_."

Grayson looked at Winston, genuine confusion and wonder apparent in his face. "I don't know. I've never seen that happen before. -Probably nothing," he added, but without much conviction.

* * *

"So," Tracer began, now with her own jar of peanut butter and sitting down on the floor next to Winston, leaning up against him. "Let's review."

"Alright," Winston murmured, rubbing his temples.

"Grayson, for reasons we don't know yet, has telekinetic powers that, up until recently, were pretty harmless."

"Yes."

"His cousin posts a few videos of some telekinetic demonstrations, and nobody on the internet is able to prove that they're hoaxes. Talon catches wind of this and sends out an agent posing as 'Mr. Tani' to observe Grayson more closely."

"Yes."

"Mr. Tani manipulates Grayson into proving that his powers are real, and have the potential to grow."

"Yes."

"Talon eventually gives the order for Tani to abduct him, which he attempts during a field trip. Grayson's abilities lash out in self-defense and skewer Tani onto the dino statue. Talon sends in Reaper to make a second abduction attempt-"

"-And then you and I stepped in, yes."

Tracer tugged her spoon out of her mouth and tossed it casually over her head, where it landed in the sink with a clatter. "Well, I'd say you got a good chunk of information outta him. Now we have a better idea as to how all of this mess got started."

Winston moved to stand and tossed his empty jar in the trash, on top of the burnt residue from the first attempt at breakfast much earlier in the day. "He asked me when he could go home," he said sullenly, still looking into the trash.

Tracer stood up too and approached him from behind. "...What did you tell him?"

"I told him as soon as we could make sure that the bad gu—that _Talon_ was no longer targeting him. I told him that we really didn't know how long that would be."

"How'd he take it?"

"Not well. He went to his room and ignored Athena and myself for most of the day."

"Did anything-?"

"His powers didn't manifest at all. Nothing shook or broke. The lights didn't even flicker. He came back out and apologized after a few hours."

"Apologized? For what?"

"I think he thought he overreacted. I told him that was silly, that his response was appropriately proportional to the situation."

"...Did you say it just like that?"

"...Yes. I think most of what I say goes over his head. He still seemed a bit agitated, so I put a movie on to distract him."

"Looks like it ended up distracting you, too."

"He asked me to watch it with him."

Taking his hand, she circled around him, between himself and the garbage can. "Hey—what is it? Why are you so down?"

"I just...I don't know. I feel bad. I feel bad that we can't let him go home. We don't even have a direct line of communication to his family yet, just in case someone like Sombra is waiting around to eavesdrop." He sat at one of the bar stools at the island, which creaked loudly under his weight. "He reminds me of myself when I was younger, back when Horizon was overrun and I was stuck there until my ship was completed. I know a little bit about how he feels. I think I'm projecting on him, a little bit. Unfairly."

Tracer glanced over towards the living room. Grayson was still out of sight, still asleep on the floor in front of the couch.

"Was he really all that broken up about not being able to go home? He wasn't even a _little_ excited that he got to hang around with some Overwatch agents? Or am I overestimating our popularity?" Tracer mused.

"He came around to the idea eventually." Winston said, smirking. "But now I need to figure out what we're going to do with him. He can't stay here indefinitely, and we need Mercy to do a diagnostic on him to see if his abilities are hurting him. I don't want him overexerting himself like he did at the hospital, it could be dangerous."

"Can she fly over here?"

"I haven't asked yet. I'm hoping she can. A few of the Watchpoints in Europe are compromised by Sombra, so I wouldn't want to risk bringing him there if we can help it."

"She's a right pain."

Winston rolled his eyes. "Indeed she is."

* * *

The storm system that had hovered over LA for the the past few days finally heaved itself over the Rockies and towards the interior of the continent, stopping briefly over Nevada. Junkrat could smell wet earth and suggested that he and Roadhog pull off the road to take cover for a while. An abandoned gas station in the middle of the desert, stripped of all color by the sun and barely held together by a few choice nails, served as a temporary shelter for when the storm hit.

They sat in opposite corners on the cracked concrete slab of a floor. A line of ants marched around Junkrat, who busied himself with smushing them one by one with his thumb. Roadhog lay on his back, a flickering holoscreen floating over his face. Every time thunder rolled through the shack, they reached for their weapons, having long ago made an unconscious link between loud noises and an incoming enemy.

"I wanna try that sometime," Junkrat prattled after a while. "I wanna try and make something blow up that sounds like that. Like the thunder."

"You need something big, in somewhere that echoes. Like inside a shipping container."

"Yeah! Something like that. Nothing like a nice big rebounding BOOM," he said, slamming his fist down over a scorpion that scuttled past him in an attempt to escape the storm. He scooped up the mess and pocketed it. "What're you doing over there, Hoggie?"

"We got a message."

"Oh yeah? Another spam email probably."

"No."

"No?" Junkrat scuffled around until he was sitting upright. "What is it?"

"There's a train coming. A big one. Carrying loot."

"Loot?"

" _Big_ loot."

"You don't say..." Junkrat sighed, leaning back against the splintered wall behind him as he pondered this news. "Whaddya think?"

Roadhog shrugged.

"Well," Junkrat considered, "Las Vegas isn't going anywhere. We can always go back after this train heist."

Roadhog minimized his holoscreen and rolled over to face him. "Want to chance it?"

"Why not?" Junkrat clapped his hands together in time with the thunder. "A train heist has been on my bucket list for ages."


End file.
